McAndrew: $100M Fund Requires $1B Exit Potential for Every Deal
Kate McAndrew · Will VCs Bet $1.5M on This Luxury Grooming Company’s U.S. Expansion? · Mar 19, 2025 · at 23:22
Kate McAndrew, founding partner at Baukunst, explains to Barberino's founder Michele Callegari why experiential beauty retail does not fit her venture capital fund's return model.
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“One of the reasons that I rarely invest in beauty is because we have a hundred million dollar fund. And the way that we think about returns for our fund is we want the opportunity for every company that we invest in to have the opportunity to return our whole fund in order to make the venture math work, which means that we need minimum kind of billion dollar exit potential.”
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More from Kate McAndrew
McAndrew: I maintain an anti-management consultant stance on founders
“And I'm always dubious about management consultants. You know, that's like, I definitely have an anti management consultant stance and she won me over anyway, which is impressive.”
McAndrew proposes leading Jungle's seed round with $1.25M at $10M post
“I would look to lead this with something like 1.25 million at a 10 post, just because that's often where the valuation threshold is for us with the deals that we like to do.”
McAndrew: Edtech apps must charge semesterly or annually to survive summer churn
“Like, so I think you basically have to get people to pay for the semester, or for the school year, or pay the annual rate, otherwise you're gonna churn people out. Every summer or, and you're going to need to reacquire them.”
McAndrew predicts Jungle's seed round will close at a $12M–$15M valuation
“But my guess is this gets done At 12, 15, and it's, like, at 12, 15, and that makes sense, given where they're at, the fact that they did a pre-seed, but also just, like, the data”
McAndrew: Churn-heavy revenue growth inevitably catches up to startups by Series B
“When people talk about revenue, they're missing at least 50% of the story, which is there's revenue, and then there's revenue quality. If you have a bunch of revenue that's churning, any investor with their salt is going to look under the hood at your metrics …”
McAndrew offers to invest $1M to $1.5M in Sundae pending diligence
“I work in a partnership, so I have three partners, but I would be very excited to jump into diligence, and my investment would be, I would say, at least a million. I would rather do 1.25, if you'd be open to taking more. I'd even go 1.5 if you would be willing…”